


I Eat All

by youreyestheyglow



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Death in a big way the whole thing is about death, Marco is literally Death, Other, Suicide mention, This was supposed to be shippy but it's not, honestly this isn't even particularly fandom-y, so you're forewarned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:10:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1775323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youreyestheyglow/pseuds/youreyestheyglow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco is Death, and he and Jean have some conversations before Jean dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Eat All

**Author's Note:**

> If you're suicidal, read this at your own discretion. It doesn't advocate for suicide, just the opposite, but if I had read this back when I was suicidal, the beginning would have hit too close to home.

_I am Death. Destroyer of Worlds, Soul Eater, the One who Ends Universes. Take your pick. I will eat you anyway. I am omnipresent. The number of the dead does not decrease my hunger. The rate at which you die will not affect my ability to stand and wait as the life drips from your bloodstream, your well of energy running dry. I can destroy a universe without ceasing my constant observation of yours, and often of you. You never fail to amuse me with your predictability._

_You will be like all the rest._

_There are those who fight. They fight Death, even as I rush towards them with an open mouth. And when their bodies cease movement for the last time, when they see me as I am, they run. Or they fight. They act as though they cannot see the inevitability of it all. It doesn’t matter. I eat them all._

_There are those who fear me. They run, too, when they see me, but not to prolong the sham they call life. They run out of terror, base instinct. Or perhaps just so that they don’t have to see me when I come for them. It doesn’t matter. I eat them all._

_There are those who accept me. They see me and take a deep breath, like it will help them somehow, and they wait, calmly, patiently. Perhaps they truly understand that I am the end of all. Perhaps they hope for special treatment. It doesn’t matter. I eat them all._

_There are three types of people. Some are mixtures of the two. They are rare._

_No one leaves these well-worn paths._

_Except one._

_This doesn’t excuse my behavior. But perhaps it explains it._

_Because he was none of the three, and he was no combination of the three._

_As per usual, he appeared, shimmering in gold, the light leeching out of his skin even as he stood there._

_I waited for him to complete his transition into this world._

_He picked at his fingernails._

_Perhaps he hadn’t noticed me, looming over him. I cast a large shadow. I suppose it was only to be expected that a day would come when someone would be able to ignore it._

_But then he glanced up at me._

“Well? Gonna eat me or what?”

_I have eaten universes full of living beings. I have seen all circumstances._

_This situation was unique._

_A mortal concept of time is very different from mine, and I’m afraid I took too long to respond._

_He rolled his eyes at me._

_I eat souls on a regular basis and he rolled his eyes at me._

_Allow me to clarify. People have done this before. They often do this to establish that they are not afraid of me, which is always a lie. Sometimes they issue a challenge, and when I do not respond, they do this, as though to taunt me into accepting._

_This was not that._

_This was annoyance and acceptance rolled into one._

_He did not care that I had not answered._

_He cared that he had bothered to try._

_“I am.”_

_He actually looked surprised when I answered._

_I don’t blame him for this._

_I was too._

“Could you get on with it then? ‘Cause first of all, they really aren’t kidding when they say ‘you can’t take it with you when you die,’ I don’t have a phone or anything and it’s getting fucking boring. Second of all.” _He looks down at his body._ “Apparently you can’t take clothes with you either. And I’m all for being nude, trust me, I am all about that life, but the temperature up here is weird, like I can’t decide if I’m cold or warm or what, and also, there are other people up here, and I’m not particularly down with a random stranger, AKA you, seeing my dick. That’s not something I’m big on.”

_I have heard people talk. I have heard people ramble. It is always out of nerves. Tension. Some vague, fading hope that they could make a deal with me._

_I have never heard anyone talk for the sake of answering a question._

_“Time is relative, here. And I do not care about your genitals.”_

_I answered him once, then twice again._

_I answered him, at all._

_My voice is not developed above a whisper. It is not meant to be used._

_I am not meant to answer._

_He sits with a sigh._ “How long am I gonna sit here?”

_“Until the gold fades.”_

_Three times._

_Three times, I have answered._

_He looks at his skin. It continues to glow as brightly as it did when he appeared in my realm. The minor difference I see is invisible to his eyes._

“Welp, looks like I’m here for a while.” _He looks back at me._ “You got people to eat or?”

_“I am omnipresent. I can eat and talk at the same time.” I decide to stop counting my answers._

“Dude, gross. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to eat with your mouth full?”

_“No.”_

“Didn’t you ever have parents?”

_“Long dead.”_

“Wait, you had parents?” _He sits up straighter._ “Did you kill your own parents? Is that a dumb question?”

_“They created me specifically to end them. They did not want to live forever. They were intelligent. They understood the horror of eternal life. Infinite struggles, pain, fear, ignorance – these are the defining characteristics of the living. Total cessation of existence may not be pleasant, and life may be wonderful for many years, but there comes a point in time when the balance tips, when continuing to exist would be far harder than ceasing to exist. I do not remember my parents. I have outlived them by an infinite amount of time.”_

“Yeah. Yeah, that I get. I just – didn’t think many people did.”

_“Are you among those who came to me by their own hand?”_

_He does not answer me for a moment._

_When he does, it is abrupt, and he does not answer my question._

“That’s a little ironic. The idea that death is alive.”

_His gold is fading, little by little._

_He will be gone soon enough._

_I did not see the harm in continuing to converse with him._

_“Perhaps it is. Perhaps one day I, too, will die.”_

“Do you have a name?”

_His impertinence is mildly annoying._

_“Marco.”_

“That’s modern as fuck.”

_“That is because it is not my name. My name would be entirely unintelligible to you. It would be meaningless. Your existence will end soon. There is no need to force me to listen to your attempts at making sense of my name.”_

“That makes sense, I guess. What do you do up here? Do you ever get bored? Do you watch living people?”

_“I cannot see the living. Time is relative up here. I notice its passing only in terms of the dead and of my hunger. I wait for the dead to become palatable and I eat.”_

“That’s a boring existence.”

_“But it is mine.”_

“What hunger?”

_“Souls. I eat souls. I eat energy. I eat you. I am hungry, always hungry, waiting for more souls to come to me, waiting to use your energy to fuel me. I am starving.”_

“That’s a little creepy. What would happen if you didn’t get any food? Would you die? Is that possible?”

_I began to direct more of my attention to him._

_He asks interesting questions._

_“I do not know.”_

_I reconsider._

_“Perhaps I would eat myself.”_

“You could do that?”

_“Theoretically.”_

“Why would you even want to live this long? You said it yourself, the longer you live, the worse it gets.”

_“I did not say that. I said that there comes a point when the pain of living overshadows the pain of death.”_

“There’s a difference?”

_“It is the same as the difference between being awake for fourteen hours and being awake for seven days straight. One is natural and good. The other is horrifying and painful. Just as one must sleep after a long day, one must die after a long life.”_

“What if it’s a short one? What if you get exhausted after two hours instead of fourteen?”

_I have never been asked these questions before._

_Perhaps no one has ever considered them._

_Perhaps no one has ever dared to ask them._

_Either way, this calls for a reaction._

_It has been a long time since I made myself visible in a form other than my natural one._

_When I pull myself into a more tangible form, one that will make sense to him, it is tall, gangly, slim. I have never seen the need for bulk. I can only imagine that my eyes must be horrible to behold; them, I cannot make human, only fit them into a human face. They will always hold the shadow that I am._

_He looks surprised. He is right to be. I do not do this often._

“Nice freckles, dude.”

_“Freckles?”_

“Like – little brown dots. On your face.”

_“What?”_

_He turns around so that I can see his back._

“I used to swim. Tons of sun on my back. All those little brown dots are freckles.”

_He does indeed have tons of small brown dots._

_I touch my face and sit down in front of him. “Where?”_

_He smiles and it is strange. I don’t see many smiles._

_He touches my face and his gray fingers are gentle. He does not pull at my skin or slap me for what I am about to do – namely, eat him._

_He brushes his fingers over my cheekbones._

“Mostly there. But kind of everywhere.”

_He laughs at me. A happy laugh. I’ve never heard one like it before._

“You look surprised.”

_“Out of the three people who have previously beheld this form, two were my parents and one was my sister. Not one of them felt the need to describe me. I held this form for only a few minutes before I ate my mother’s soul and became darkness.”_

_He looks at me very seriously._

“You have black hair, and it’s in an undercut, like mine – how mine is longer up top and buzzed on the bottom – but yours is all the same color. You have a bunch of freckles on your face, but most of them are on your cheeks and nose. Your nose is straight and – long, I guess? Really, like what decides if a nose is short or long, it depends on the shape of your face, so I mean – but like. Yeah. It’s proportional, anyway. Your eyes are a teensy-tiny bit terrifying, not to be mean or anything, but like, talk about black whirlpools of doom, that’s your eyes. They’re set right in your face, though – proper distance from your nose and all. Kind of a big forehead, but your hair covers it up well enough, so who cares. You can see the rest of your body just fine, and I’m not looking past your neck until you put some clothes on. Also, I don’t know what you’re trying to do with your mouth, but if that’s supposed to be a smile, I’m gonna have to ask you to stop. That is terrifying. How long has it been since you smiled?”

_“I don’t believe I ever have.”_

“Well, that’s fucking sad. I lied. Smile again, you need the practice.”

_He reaches out and puts his fingers at the corner of my mouth and tugs upwards._

“Okay, that’s still terrifying, but whatever. I tried.”

_“Are you afraid of me?”_

_He shrugs._ “Kinda? I mean, you’re this big shadowy dude that talks but like, not out of a mouth, and then you have a body and it is uncanny valley over here, that’s not normal. But like. In general? Eh. You’re gonna eat me soon and then it’s all over, right? That’s it, no more pain or feelings at all, I’m done.”

_That reminds me. “You asked a question. About what happens if you get tired after two hours instead of fourteen.”_

_He doesn’t look happy to be reminded of it. You suppose it doesn’t matter. You do not meet many happy people._

_He is beginning to turn dim. His extremities are already gray, and his limbs are losing their golden energy as well._

_You will have to eat him soon enough._

_And then, perhaps, you will never meet another happy person._

_“I would say this. Have you ever had a bad morning, but a wonderful evening?”_

“I’ve also had a lot of bad days. Straight through. Morning til night.” _He cracks a strange smile, and when he speaks, his voice is tense, like he is choking._ “Thought about you a lot, most of the time.”

_I almost remind him that he did not know me. But I am not entirely obtuse. His meaning does not escape me. “It is impossible to have a day with no happy moments. If you look only for the fully happy days, you will find none. You cannot let the sad moments overshadow the happy ones. Life does not work that way.”_

“You’re literally, actually, really, honestly, death. Like, _death_ death. You eat life for breakfast. And not Life the cereal. Actual life.”

_“I don’t know what cereal is. It’s irrelevant. I am, in fact, as you have pointed out, alive. And I do not have happy moments. I eat people. No one comes to me happy. They come to me angry, scared, or accepting, but not happy. I do not smile. No one here does. No one is ready for death, no one happily leaves their loved ones behind. No one talks to me except to shout meaningless questions and accusations. Time here is relative, but I have spoken one other time in the infinity I have existed, and it was not recently. Jean, you are a happy moment, for me. I have seen a smile. I know what I look like. I have spoken and been listened to. And for me, that must be enough. I will not have other happy moments.”_

“Not everyone’s the same, you know. What’s enough for you isn’t enough for me.”

_He glares at me._

_I made him angry._

_I don’t care._

_I am Death. I am Destroyer of Souls._

_And the last of the golden light is fading from his skin._

_I touch it._

_It burns._

_I don’t care._

_“Live, Jean Kirschtein. You will have other happy moments.”_

_I push him._

_His eyes open wide as he falls backwards._

_He grabs onto my hand as he falls._

_I don’t care._

_I drop my physical form, and there is nothing more for him to hold onto._

_He falls._

_I cannot see the living. But he is there._

_The next time I see him, he is older. He looks around like he is searching for someone._

_He shines like a sun._

“Marco!” _He yells._ “Marco, you’d better fucking answer me! Are my kids here?” _He sinks to his knees._

_I take my physical form again._

_He stumbles to his feet and grabs my shoulders. He no longer seems to have the same squeamishness regarding my nakedness as the previous time._ “My kids. Please, Marco, please tell me. Maria, Rose, Sina –”

_“Not here. I cannot see them. There is a chance they are on the verge of death, but if so, I will know in a few minutes.”_

_He does not relax._

_I see no children. No others. “What happened?”_

_He runs his fingers through his hair._ “Car crash. Curvy road. Guy coming the other way didn’t stay in his own lane.” _He shudders._ “How much longer until you know for sure?”

_I pause and watch for a moment. “If I can’t see them, they are not in danger. Doctors are good at what they do. They will survive.”_

_He relaxes and drops to the floor._

_I sit down in front of him. “You had children?”_

_He grins at me, and I do my best to smile back._

“You should practice smiling more often. It’s even worse than I remember.” _He reaches out and pulls the corner of my lips up._ “Now, like, soften your lips? I have no idea how to explain this, even blind people know how to smile.”

_I try to soften my lips._

_I have no idea what he’s telling me to do._

“I – okay, maybe just don’t. Anyway. Kids. I have three daughters. Maria, Rose, and Sina, 13, 10, and 7, respectively. The causes of most of the happy moments in my life, honestly. Sina’s a monster. Everyone thinks she’s this little sweetheart, but she’s not, she’s just a genius who knows to stay quiet while she tortures her sisters. Maria’s bigger, a little clumsier – I had to take her to the hospital so many times when she was little, you have no idea. She broke a bone a year, I think, from the time she was five until last year. This year was good – she only sprained her ankle. Drives up my insurance costs like crazy.” _His words are angry, but he looks and sounds happy. He grins at me the whole time._ “And Rose – Rosie is my middle child. She got the short end of the stick. She didn’t get the attention that Maria got and she didn’t get the babying that Sina gets. She’s doing fine, though. She’s a sweetheart. She keeps me sane when Maria’s falling down three flights of stairs because Sina tripped her.” _His smile softens, and I understand precisely what he wanted me to do earlier._ “I was supposed to take them bowling. Sina was so excited – Maria and Rosie told her it was fun. She’s been waiting to go since she was, like, three. I hope Mikasa takes them.”

_“Mikasa?”_

“Their mother. My ex-wife.”

_“Ex?”_

_He sighs._ “I – honestly, I’d had a crush on her for years before I died the last time, and then I just got –” _He runs his hand through his hair again. Even I can recognize a nervous habit._

_“You became depressed and she became the least of your worries,” I supply._

_He nods gratefully._ “And then you sent me back. I was fucking pissed at you for that, by the way. I’d tried so hard to get out and you threw me right back in – like, damn, fuck you. But – you had said to live. So I did. I graduated high school and ended up at the same university as Mikasa – we both went for the sports, me for baseball and her for volleyball, and we ended up seeing a lot of each other. And without her brother there, there wasn’t much holding us apart, and we – we were both lonely, I think. And it worked, for a while. I loved her. I don’t think she loved me as much as I loved her, but she loved me enough. And then Maria came along, and then Rosie, and for a while after each of them were born we were both happy. Things started falling apart again, and we made Sina, but…” _He should really stop running his hands through his hair._ “We weren’t even fighting, really. We just – stopped looking at each other. Couldn’t stand the sight of each other. Like – divorces are supposed to be hard, but honestly, we just split our shit and got out of there. She moved in with her brother and his husband for a little while, so I got the house, and we still had joint custody of the kids. I had them most of the time – so they could stay in their house and keep going to their school and everything. Mikasa’s living with her girlfriend, Annie, now. It’s weird. It’s like – I don’t even care that they’re together. They’re adorable. Annie’s way better for her than I was. I hope they’ll move into my house, the kids should be able to go to school…” _He looks back at me._ “I also hope they destroy my computer without ever looking at it, but like, that’s whatever. How have you been doing up here? Made any new friends?”

_“Jean, is that a joke?”_

_He frowns._ “Is what a joke? The whole destroying the computer thing? ‘Cause no, I’m serious, there’s some weird shit on there –”

_“The making friends thing.”_

“No? Why would it be a joke?”

_He honestly looks surprised._

_“Jean, I do not make friends. I destroy people. No one makes conversation with me. They beg, they attempt to negotiate, they try to reason. They don’t talk to me.”_

“No one?”

 _“No one_.”

“How? You’re _death_ , man, you eat souls all day long. Isn’t that at least a little bit interesting? Also, you! Like, how do you not talk to people? You could hear all their stories, everything that happened to them. You could learn so much about the world and about people, how do you not?”

_“Few people are willing to tell me about their lives. They suspect my intentions of being – cruel, I suppose. Voyeuristic. They will not tell me.”_

_He is dimming faster this time than last. The older people get, the less time it takes them to shed life, I’ve noticed. He is no exception._

“Do you even try?”

 _“Rarely._ ”

“You should give it a shot.” _He smiles at me kindly._ “Have some more happy moments.”

_“I wouldn’t know what to do with them if I had them.”_

_He looks sad._

“I don’t want to leave you alone. I wish I could stay with you.”

_For the first time in my existence, I hear a plea that I want to honor. That I have reason to honor. A plea that isn’t selfishly made._

_He is dimming quickly. There are only tiny golden shimmers left._

_He leans forward, slowly, hesitantly._

_I close my eyes as his lips brush my cheek, his gentle fingers under my chin, holding my head in place._

“I – sorry.”

_“You don’t look very sorry.”_

_He does look a little guilty, now, and he opens his mouth to say something, but I tap my finger on his lips to keep him silent as I place my lips against his forehead._

_He smiles at me._ “Be nice to my kids when they get here, if you could?”

_I do it again._

_I touch the last blindingly, burningly golden place on his skin. “Tell them nice things about me, if you could? And then come back to me.” I push._

_The third time he comes to me is not much later._

_His hair has barely begun to turn grey._

_He is not scared this time. He does not look around for his children._

_I am in my physical form before he can call for me, and he hugs me. His age has dimmed his gold. It hurts. It doesn’t hurt so much that I tell him to stop._

“I missed you. Is that weird?”

_“Did you harm yourself again?” I ask. I search his face for the answer, but he shakes his head._

“No, no, I promise. I got mugged.” _He shrugs._ “No big deal.”

_I have no idea what ‘mugged’ is. “Your children?”_

_His smile turns into a grin._ “Good. Maria’s graduating college this year. Princeton University – a really good college. Incredibly good. Nearly impossible to get into. Rosie’s finishing up her first year at Bryn Mawr – another great school. Sina’s getting nervous about it, poor baby. She’s worried she won’t be able to live up to her sisters. She’ll do fine. She could go to the community college and it wouldn’t matter.” _He pulls in a deep breath._ “Thanks, Marco. For pushing me back. I – got to see my girls grow up. I got to see them be maids of honor at Mikasa and Annie’s wedding. I got to help two of them with college applications and help them through high school and help Maria through college and – and I can’t believe I tried to kill myself in high school, they wouldn’t exist, I almost stopped them from _existing_ –” _He hugs me again, and this time I expect it. I hug him back._ “You’ve done so much for me, I just – want you to know that. I guess it doesn’t matter to you, what with the whole ‘being death’ thing, but – I can’t even begin to thank you.” _His face is already resting on my shoulder. It does not take much for him to turn his head and kiss my neck._ “You gave me a second chance and then a _third_ and – fuck, I’m dimming already, I – Marco, I –”

_“At three, I stop counting.”_

“What?”

_I have no explanation for my actions, let alone excuses._

_I pull his graying face out of my shoulder and kiss him on the lips. “I’m sorry, Jean. Please forget that, or forgive it. Or neither. I will not eat you. I stopped counting at three.”_

_He stares at me, his hands gripping my shoulders._

_I smile as I reach for his face, where the last patch of gold is shrinking._

“Marco, please – I want to stay with you –”

_“See your children get old. Promise me.”_

_He nods, and he is crying. I’m not sure why. Perhaps he was thankful._

“I’m staying, next time,” _he whispers._ “I want to.”

_I push._

_His tear-stained face falls away from me._

_I miss him._

_I get lonely._

_Every person who comes to me gets treated worse for not being him._

_I begin to think of problems._

_I cannot push him back into his body forever. He will get old. He will have to die. I will have to eat him._

_I will eat him._

_I cannot eat him._

_I must eat him._

_I will not eat him._

_I eat all._

_He comes to me an old man._

_He smiles when he sees me._

_His gold is only yellow._

“Marco.”

_“Jean.”_

“I’ve seen my girls get big, Marco. I’ve lived more than I had any right to.” _He takes my hands and kisses my lips and I’m so happy and so sad to see him that if I were truly alive, I would die._ “I’m yours.”

_“I don’t want you to go.”_

_His face crumples and his voice shakes._ “I don’t want to leave you, either, but either you eat me or you send me back, and I won’t go back. I’ve stayed awake all day. It’s time for me to sleep now.”

_I hate the look on his face._

_It doesn’t matter._

_I eat all._

_He kisses me one more time._

“Goodbye, Marco.”

_I abandon my physical form._

_“Goodbye, Jean.”_

_I unhinge my jaw._


End file.
